#45 The Chess Master

Behind the Balance Sheet

In his youth, George Michelakis, was a top 3 global under-20chess player. No surprise he is pretty good at investing too and runs a $2bn long short equity hedge fund out of London. Since 2006, he has compounded capital at a rate of 5.35x vs 3.43k for the MSCI world, on net exposure of 30-45%. That’s an impressive record but astonishingly, he entered his longest-running short position 10 years ago.

We talked about his investing philosophy, his theory about alifestyle recession, why shorting is critical to performance, how he manages the fund and the team, why he focuses on management and why, as in chess, man plus machine or analyst plus AI will beat the lone human, which has profoundimplications for investors.